I am glad that you have found my blog and I hope you will take few minutes to explore.

Please leave a comment if you can. I love reading your messages, they brighten up my day :-)

I like to answer you all, but if you are "noreply-comment" blogger (if your email address is not linked to your profile), I will not be able to answer you, unless you leave your email address with your comment.

Welcome!

Sunday, 19 October 2014

wool embroidery

October has a definite autumnal feel, with trees now changing colour and wet leaves on the ground.

It is still very mild for the time of year, around 18°C during the day. The garden is now looking little tired, but still refusing to give up completely.

The fuchsia, hanging by the kitchen door, is still in a full swing.

But I felt that a little seasonal planting was needed for a continuation of colour.

I wanted a new embroidery project for the coming winter evenings, so I decided on a wool embroidery. The inspiration came from wool embroideries I had seen on our trips to Scandinavia, and also from this book, which has some lovely projects, including wool embroidered cushions. So, an embroidered wool cushion will be my next embroidery project for this winter.

But I wanted to find few more pictures and Internet research found the book pictured below,

which looked like something "I really need"

(you know how it is).

I expect some of our Scandinavian friends know it.

Unfortunately only in Swedish, but this has not put me off. Eventually I found a Swedish bookseller who was prepared to ship to UK.

No, I don't speak Swedish, so yes, I am probably missing a lot, but the pictures are the most important thing in this case and the book is full of them.

I have never done a crewel embroidery on wool, only on linen, but I want to make this all wool, so I started to look for wool felt. I soon realised that it is not an easy task, most craft felt is now from recycled man made materials.

Eventually Google found Cloud Craft, where you can find lovely soft 100% wool felt in some gorgeous shades.

Don't you just love it, when the postman brings little packages of fabrics and threads?

This is the colour of felt I chose. Dark background is so good for showing of bright colour threads.

Another package had new supply of Appleton crewel threads,

and another Renaissance Dyeing crewel threads, to add to some I have already.

These are very soft, softer than Appleton, but they don't come in many strong vibrant shades, because their colour comes from natural dyes.

So, all materials are here, all I have to do now, is to make a final decision on a design I want to make, there are so many beautiful ideas in both books.

9 comments:

Dear Radka,wow, the fuchsias have a great color! I also like the shell with the cyclamen, a beautiful autumn decoration.For your new Embroidery project I wish you much joy. I look forward to pictures of your new project.The winter evenings are long and then we have more time for embroidery. At the moment I have a lot to cut into my garden, on Wednesday the weather will be bad.Have a nice Week !

How gorgeous is your winter embroidery project. Lovely assortment of colours for the dull days and dark evenings. I have not seen the Renaissance dyes before, must check them out - although it's a wonder my loft does not sink under the quantity of Appletons up there.

Looking forward to see your project! Have your visited this site http://svenskhemslojd.com/products/gör-det-själv/broderiI notice that I have to prove I'm not a robot ;-), thought you didn't like that kind